Variable Future-time Expression in L2 Spanish: The Roles of Regularity and Form Avoidance

Speaker: Irene Soto-Lucena (Pitt Linguistics)

Speakers of Spanish employ several different forms to convey future, and as Bardovi-Harlig (2004) notes, future expression involves mood, tense, and aspect, which gives it particular potential to provide insight about second language (L2) learners’ acquisition processes. Future forms include the morphological future (MF), periphrastic future (PF), and present indicative (PI), as respectively indicated in El avión saldrá / va a salir / sale a las dos “The plane will leave / is going to leave / leaves at two”. Lexical futures (LF) are also common in Spanish (e.g., Este fin de semana espero relajarme “This weekend I hope to relax”). Research has generally shown the MF declining in favor of PF and PI (e.g., Blas Arroyo, 2008; Orozco, 2021), along with the prevalence of LFs, employed by native speakers and L2 learners (Kanwit, 2017). Although there is a growing body of research on the acquisition of this variable structure (e.g., De Prada Pérez et al., 2021; Gudmestad & Geeslin, 2013; Kanwit, 2017; Pascual y Cabo & Vela, 2020), little attention has been paid to whether learners may avoid certain future variants based on uncertainty regarding knowledge of or ability to produce relevant forms (e.g., multisyllabic, irregular MF forms). This study addresses in our design under-investigated strategies of form avoidance (Alonso-Vázquez, 2004; Hubert, 2015) that affect other structures and may contribute to L2 future-time variation.

In the current study, 60 high-intermediate and advanced learners of Spanish responded to 4 open-ended writing prompts eliciting future-time expression. Data analysis accounts for several independent linguistic variables, found significant in previous research (i.e., verb frequency, presence of adverbial temporal expressions, temporal distance, clause type, sentence polarity, person/number) as well as verbal morphological regularity, based on its effects on other variable structures (e.g., Collentine, 1997; Gudmestad, 2012; Kanwit & Geeslin, 2014). The analysis integrates learners’ responses to a form-avoidance questionnaire, examining self-report accounts on avoidance behavior. Overall, findings support lower rates of MF and higher rates of LFs and PI at higher proficiency levels. Multivariate analyses revealed that temporal adverbials were found to most strongly favor the PI, since they are critical in reinforcing non-present (i.e., future) uses of the form. Responses to the form-avoidance questionnaire revealed that many learners do report avoiding the MF due to concerns regarding accurate production, providing an explanation for individual cases of low usage of the variant, especially with irregular forms. In sum, the study contributes to the growing body of research on L2 future-time expression while providing novel data on form avoidance and its connection to morphological irregularity.